Riverview Elementary to open a week late

Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal Riverview Elementary School teachers Shirley Proctor, rear, and Mariah Spry move into their classrooms Thursday afternoon at the new school in Dayton. School staff, family, friends and volunteers plan to work for the next week preparing for the school to open Sept. 4.

Janette Dabel’s three children were ready for their school to start Monday, but they understand a new school comes with “quirks.”

“You know,” she said, “we’re OK with another week of summer.”

Her children – in third grade, second grade and kindergarten – will start at the new Riverview Elementary School on Sept. 4, a week after the rest of the Lyon County School District starts.

Riverview, which will have more than 300 students, has been under construction since February. District Superintendent Nat Lommori said he would have liked to open the school on time, but didn’t have a choice.

He decided to delay the school’s opening because he wasn’t sure when some necessary paperwork from the school’s land developer, Reynen and Bardis, would arrive.

The developer, currently building a housing addition next to the land it donated for the school along Fort Churchill Road in Dayton, said it got a $600,000 insurance coverage bond for the school as soon as it could. The money is there for the county if it has to pick up work on the school project.

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Ted Erkan, the developer’s Northern Nevada Division president, said his business was told what it had to do late afternoon or evening Monday and got the information to the county on Wednesday.

Lommori said he had to make the decision about the school on Tuesday, because he didn’t want to wait until later in the week to tell parents.

They were told by phone Wednesday, he said.

Riverview Principal Nolan Greenburg said he has been pushing to open the school later because of delays in construction. For instance, the school doesn’t have a paved road leading to its entrance yet.

“It’s just been one thing or another,” Greenburg said. “And it just did not give us enough lead time to get in so that we could reasonably start on Monday.”

Also, even teachers weren’t allowed to go inside the school until Thursday. Many of the rooms, like the library, are just starting to bring in furniture.

School librarian Cheré Brown said students and teachers are ready for school, but understands the school isn’t ready to open yet.

“I wish we didn’t have to delay,” she said. “I know the kids were anxious to start. Teachers are anxious to start. But if we had to open on Monday, this would be a disaster. I don’t know if I’ll have shelves.”

When they do come in, she said, “I think I’ll be using the students to put the books on the shelves.”

Teachers and staff who get an extra week of vacation in August should not mind coming to work for one more week in June.